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First POST: Clips

The 2008 presidential campaign was sometimes called the YouTube Election because it was the first White House contest held since the creation of the ubiquitous video site. And YouTube helped shape the political identities of 2008′s major players with its viral video hits like the pro-Obama celebrity mash-up Yes We Can. While that dynamic persists — parodies of Rick Perry’s latest TV ad, for instance, currently abound — so far, the 2012 campaign has been dominated by a very different online-video novelty: easily searchable digital archival footage.

The Obama campaign is encouraging supporters to make donations in honor of their conservative relatives.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Developmenthas called on its member countries to "promote and protect the global free flow of information” online, the New York Times reported. "The O.E.C.D. , a group of 34 developed countries, urged policy makers to support investment in digital networks and to take a light touch on regulation, saying this was essential for promoting economic growth via the Internet," according to the Times.

The Vice President of the European Commission, Neelie Kroes, has responded to criticism regarding her choice of former German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg as an adviser to the EU's new Internet freedom campaign. German Internet activists in particular had mocked the choice of Guttenberg, who had to resign after allegations that he plagiarized his doctoral thesis. There's now a wiki site devoted to highlighting his plagiarisms. He has also favored blocking access to websites accused of hosting child pornography, advocating measures that Internet activists have deemed to be ineffective and overbroad.